Roads and shaded relief

Jillita

Posted 11 July 2007 - 02:10 PM

Jillita

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Hi everyone -

Long time GISer, brand new Mapublisher/Illustrator-er. I'm creating a map with some nice shaded relief (a DEM + hillshade in ArcMap 9.1), and want to know if there is a way to make the roads layer "drape" over the shaded relief. As it is, I added the roads in Illustrator and they look far too "flat" and out of place. See the attached image and how the roads don't appear to naturally dip down into the valley or rise up onto the ridge.

Unit Seven

Posted 11 July 2007 - 08:14 PM

Not sure about why your image isn't showing up. I think what you need to do is get your roads (or Hydro) under the relief layer so the shading is interacting with them.

Could either have layers in Illustrator
>Text and Symbol Layers
>Relief
>Roads/Hydro
>Hypso/Land

Or in my opinion you would be better to do this in photoshop and place as a single image on a base layer in Illustrator. Maybe work with them above the relief untill the very end so you still have the editability of the hydro.roads and then move them into the Photoshop relief image before final output from Illustrator.

If this is a good idea or not is another debate - will blend the roads into the natral surrounds a lot more. Personally I would do it with hydro but not with roads.

With hydro I draw it as 100% cyan but set the stroke to overprint and this gives a similar result to multiply (it lets the values of m, y and k) show through but doesn't require flattening. Blends the hydro in with the land a bit but keeps nice simple postscript output.

I also often make grey/black road casing or grey or black tracks overprint for this reason but not the road fill.

In Illustrator go to Window > Attributes to set over print. (You will also have to have View > Overprint Preview ticked to see the result)

DaveB

Posted 12 July 2007 - 09:16 AM

Ah...yes I noticed the larger image isn't showing up. Is there something I need to do other than upload my image? Forgive the newbie!

Not sure, but is there a file size limit? Maybe try reducing the image or clipping out a smaller portion?Although it does seem like some fairly large images are posted in the Map Gallery. I don't know if that area has different restrictions.

Jillita

Posted 12 July 2007 - 01:06 PM

Jillita

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I uploaded my image as GIF. It didn't like my JPG apparently.

UnitSeven, thanks for the tips. I'm still an Illustrator newbie so some of the suggestions will take some experimenting. I tried the Overprint Stroke method but couldn't tell a difference, even with the preview on. Can you give more details on how this should be used?

I had tried putting the roads underneath the DEM, but the they still showed up flat....

Unit Seven

Posted 12 July 2007 - 04:30 PM

Unit Seven

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Overprint will only really work very well if the stroke or fill being set to overprint is only made up of one colour cyan, magenta, yellow or black and will really need to be over 70% of that colour. Is primarily a trapping and registration tool used on 100% black objects to avoid white halos when registration on press isn't perfect but works well for this type of thing - as a side the fact ArcMap still doesn't support overprint is one of my real gripes.

Anyway we'll look at using transparency first for what you want to do - but be aware that sometime before output is sent to a printer this transpareny has to be flattened - with a complex road and/or hydro layer this can be quite a complex bit of processing depending on settings used.

First up is your hypso gradient and relief shading coming out of Arc as one image? If so you will probably need it as two. And will also need your roads layer obviously.

Now put each of these themes on a separate layer in Illustrator with the hypso gradient/dem at the bottom, the roads at the next layer and the relief image on the top layer. Now select the relief image and finds your Transparency window and play with the blending modes - most obvious one to use is multiply, this will darken up your image quite a bit as will add grey to all the flat areas. Have had some good results with overlay as well - overlay lightens the image below when the relief is less than 50% grey, leaves as-is where relief is 50% grey, and darkens the image where the relief is, you guessed it, more than 50% grey.

Let me know how this goes and then I'll run you through doing the same thing in Photoshop whch will put much less load on Illustrator, and IMO is a better way to go building the file.

ProMapper

Posted 12 July 2007 - 10:26 PM

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Hi, your problem can be addressed by a 3D terrain making software. There are many available in the market. But one small utility 3DEM, free, can be utilized to do the trick. You can create an roads overlay, a simple geotif file. then load the height data in 3DEM and then apply the geotif overlay and blend them. You may have to try various color combinations to arrive at the correct result.

The Illustrator and other cartographic software etc do not handle relief data so the overlays will be flat. If you have used Microstation then there is a module called MTA or Modular Terrain Analyst which has great capabilities as far as generating drapes are concerned.

Long time GISer, brand new Mapublisher/Illustrator-er. I'm creating a map with some nice shaded relief (a DEM + hillshade in ArcMap 9.1), and want to know if there is a way to make the roads layer "drape" over the shaded relief. As it is, I added the roads in Illustrator and they look far too "flat" and out of place. See the attached image and how the roads don't appear to naturally dip down into the valley or rise up onto the ridge.

Unit Seven

Posted 12 July 2007 - 11:58 PM

Unit Seven

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Just to clarify what we are after here - My reading of what Jillita is not a 3d drape version of her map but to add some relief shading to her road layer - for this both Illustrator and Photoshop will handle them.

Looking at the sample map Jillita it is a straight planimetric type map and the light grey lines are sitting above the layer and because they are so light look very flat sitting above the land.

Hans van der Maarel

Posted 13 July 2007 - 01:13 AM

Looking at the sample map Jillita it is a straight planimetric type map and the light grey lines are sitting above the layer and because they are so light look very flat sitting above the land.

Is this correct?

That's what I'm seeing too.

Would it be possible to produce a separate image of just the shading (not the terrain), so you can have shading, roads, terrain (top to bottom) in Illustrator? I'm sure this would be possible in VNS, but I've never used Arc, so I don't know if it'll actually work for Jill.

MapMedia

Posted 13 July 2007 - 01:42 AM

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Its seems to me Promapper's suggestion to use a 3D package is correct. While you can use Photoshop to blend or trap the 3D and 2D themes to make a more realistic effect, the optimal solution is to make the roads 3D and overlay. My only concern with this is turning hydro or roads into raster. For small scale maps this may be a problem.

frax

Posted 13 July 2007 - 02:30 AM

I assume that you have your shade and hypsographic tinting as one image, is that correct? One option would be to have the actual relief shading (a gray scale, partially transparent image) as a separate image, and the hyposgraphic tinting (the elevation colors) separate.

Then you put the shading on top of roads, rivers and hypsography, and tweak the transparency, and it will shade those too, and make them more "realistic". I think.

Unit Seven

Posted 13 July 2007 - 02:38 AM

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That's what I'm seeing too.

Would it be possible to produce a separate image of just the shading (not the terrain), so you can have shading, roads, terrain (top to bottom) in Illustrator? I'm sure this would be possible in VNS, but I've never used Arc, so I don't know if it'll actually work for Jill.

Jillita,

I assume that you have your shade and hypsographic tinting as one image, is that correct? One option would be to have the actual relief shading (a gray scale, partially transparent image) as a separate image, and the hyposgraphic tinting (the elevation colors) separate.

Then you put the shading on top of roads, rivers and hypsography, and tweak the transparency, and it will shade those too, and make them more "realistic". I think.

Just to keep clear Jillita I think both these posts are saying the same process and both agree with what I was saying more or less. As Hans pointed out I think Arc will try to flatten them to one layer so you will have to export the relief as an image and the hypso as an image.

DaveB

Posted 13 July 2007 - 09:26 AM

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Looks to me like part of the issue is the roads data and the raster data don't match up exactly. I don't think it's a simple shift either. Looks like they are off in different directions/amounts almost randomly.

Jillita

Posted 13 July 2007 - 12:52 PM

Jillita

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Thanks for the suggestions everyone! I'm so glad I found this forum to learn new skills. I will try the suggestions for using seperate hypso, relief, and roads layers and tinker with the blending modes today.

As for using a 3-D model, I could use the ArcMap 3-D Analyst extenstion we have, but I wanted to avoid that, as I would like to find a more "artistic" (if I can say that?) way of doing this. I figured that between this forum and Shadedrelief.com I could create some very pleasing maps and avoid 3-D modeling.

Regarding the roads and raster seeming to be off in some areas, I noticed that too. I attributed it to different sources and scales. The relief shading is USGS Seamless, and the roads are...ESRI.